I'm interested to see what we do if both Joeckel and FIscher are off the board at 5.

That'd leave us with either Milliner, Ziggy, Jarvis Jones, or I wonder if Mayhew would reach and take Lane Johnson. It's against his philosophy of BPA but given the holes on our Oline and the money we have invested in FA on defense, I wouldn't be shocked at the reach.

I'm still hoping we have the best position to trade down for someone trying to get Geno. With the Browns, Cardinals, and Bills all behind us people may very well want to jump them if they have their eyes on Geno.

I'm interested to see what we do if both Joeckel and FIscher are off the board at 5.

That'd leave us with either Milliner, Ziggy, Jarvis Jones, or I wonder if Mayhew would reach and take Lane Johnson. It's against his philosophy of BPA but given the holes on our Oline and the money we have invested in FA on defense, I wouldn't be shocked at the reach.

I'm still hoping we have the best position to trade down for someone trying to get Geno. With the Browns, Cardinals, and Bills all behind us people may very well want to jump them if they have their eyes on Geno.

I wouldn't be shocked if the lions grabbed lane johnson if the other two are gone. They should have gotten a great look at him and his ability/potential when they coached him in the senior bowl.

Of course what appears to be a win now mode, I wouldn't be shocked to see them get ziggy at 5 and then trade their second and 2014 1st to move up and get johnson if they can. But of course if they didn't like what they saw in mobile they could easily stay away from him.

"A little bit like the offensive line, we have guys available who we developed," Lions coach Jim Schwartz said. "I think Ashlee Palmer has some similarities to Corey Hilliard as far as the way he came with us, became a special teams player, been on the field for us. He started a couple of games for us, including that Jacksonville game that we talked about. The sign of a good player like that is that you didn't even notice a player missing."

Schwartz also suggested Whitehead and Lewis, who played a combined three defensive snaps as rookies, are prepared for a larger role in 2013.

"We saw good things from those guys as they went through the practices and everything else," Schwartz said. "You guys might not see the development of a Jason Fox or a Tahir Whitehead or a Travis Lewis except for what they do on Sundays, on special teams and things like that, but the accumulation of reps, and what they do on the practice field, gives us confidence we will be able to find that."

The only way we will survive financially with the way we allocate our cap heavily to Stafford CJ and Suh we need to rely on our development of late round picks and low cost FA pick ups.

If this LB experiment fails and CB continues to be a massive hole then all it does is reflect on our coaches at this point. They have to be able to groom some of these players to take over for the veterans.

Agreed. I've been in the camp that says, Mayhew deserves a little criticism, but not to be fired. This is a make or break year for him though. Not only does he need this year's draft and free agency to work out, he needs to show that some of his past picks/pickups can work out too. Fox,Hilliard,Austin,Nagy,Whitehead,Palmer,Lewis,Le wis,Green,Greenwood,Bentley, Willie Young and anyone I may have missed.

Agreed. I've been in the camp that says, Mayhew deserves a little criticism, but not to be fired. This is a make or break year for him though. Not only does he need this year's draft and free agency to work out, he needs to show that some of his past picks/pickups can work out too. Fox,Hilliard,Austin,Nagy,Whitehead,Palmer,Lewis,Le wis,Green,Greenwood,Bentley, Willie Young and anyone I may have missed.

I don't know yet about Mayhew, I went over some of his past drafts and his only problem seemed to be spotting real character flaws, his overall drafts have been pretty solid IMO.
I have to wonder why the Lions quite on Schwartz last season, does he really have the qualities of a solid HC. Ford has always retained his GM's no matter what, so IMO, it is Schwartz whose career is on the line not Mayhew's. I can see Mayhew surviving at least one or 2 more seasons but Schwartz had better return to the 2011 type season or else. I'm also not seeing Schwartz really develop players
I can see Bentley, Young and one of the LBers being starters with Bentley having a shot at stardom down the road.

DHB actually has a pretty soldi catch rate the last 2 years, similar to Calvin JOhnson(55% or so). His first year or 2 were brutal, but he seems to have corrected it. He's not a great hands guy and his routes are questionable, but he's the type of big, fast outside threat we need. He seems like a fitting last piece to this offense(as far as skill players go). We'd have very nice depth at QB,RB,WR and TE at that point, all with different skill sets.

Then we can take a LT and a couple DEs in the draft, gamble a bit with the other picks. Maybe go for Mathieu and Denard Robinson later or something like that.